


Paradox

by Kalya_Lee



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-21 00:08:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/893506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalya_Lee/pseuds/Kalya_Lee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Not those times. Not one line. Don't you dare!"</p>
<p>Time hates a paradox.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paradox

She is beautiful.

She is so beautiful, sitting there in his place in her bulky spacesuit and her riot of hair and her old eyes, Rose’s eyes and Martha’s eyes and Donna’s eyes, loving him. Saving him. Denying him.

He is sick of being denied.

“Time can be rewritten,” he says, not quite a shout and not quite a plea, because if time can be rewritten then he can save her. If time can be rewritten, he can still go back, can still hope to go _back_ , someday. If time can be rewritten, maybe he can be redeemed.

If time can be rewritten, he won’t have to watch her burn.

She shakes her head at him, smiling, wet and wise in a way he understands, and he can’t look away. He watches her smile, because he has to, because he wants to remember it, this piece of something beautiful that he will never get to have.

_(If you die here - )_

He watches her smile, and _pulls_.

***

“Where is he?” Donna demands, eyes blazing, and River thinks of everything he’d ever told her about this woman. This woman, who stopped him when he went too far, who told him to _get out_ or _go back_ or _stop lying to me, spaceman_ , who never let him get away with anything.

_If she had been there_ , River thinks, _she could have stopped this_.

“Donna….” River says, in that comforting soft voice that took her too many decades and cups of tea and days spent running to learn. “Donna, I’m sorry.”

“No,” says Donna, “No. He didn’t. Tell me he didn’t.”

 Her voice is full of fury, indignation, certainty. She is sure, so sure.

_(“You would have loved her,” he told her, once, “She used to think that if she yelled at something enough she could fix anything. You women, nutters all.”_

_She had smirked, poked him in the shoulder. “Aren’t we right, though.”)_

“Donna, this isn’t something you can fix,” she says, and this is the hardest thing she has ever had to do.

Donna doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, doesn’t say no again, and River watches, and that is harder.

“He told me to take you home,” she says, softly.

As she snaps her fingers she knows that they will both break together.

***

He watches her smile and _pulls_. His shoulder pops, and he grins.

“Doctor,” she says, warily, and her eyes go wide. “What are you doing?”

“Saving the world,” his voice is smug and edged with pain. Dislocated shoulder, always messy, he usually tries to avoid them, but, well. Needs must.

“Liar,” she whispers, eyes wide with horror. “You’re not saving anything. You don’t know what you’re doing. You have no idea.”

“I never know what I’m doing,” he informs her, screwdriver in one hand and a grim laugh in his eyes. The handcuffs click open. “Until I do. But that only makes it all more fun.”

He frees himself and leaps to his feet, left arm dangling uselessly but he doesn’t mind, he won’t need it for long anyway, and his arm hurts and his head hurts and there’s a small sharp ache in his chest and none of it matters, none at all.

River has stopped smiling. That is the only thing he regrets.

_(if you die here)_

He pushes her out of the chair, and she pushes back, but for all his leanness he has his Superior Time Lord Biology on his side and she no longer has the element of surprise on hers. It’s not much of a fight. With a minute to go, there isn’t any time for it to be.

“Don’t do this,” she says, from the ground, hurt in her eyes. His heart stutters. “Donna needs you. I need you. I did, and I will. Don’t _do_ this.”

He watches her, and he is sorry and he isn’t, she is so beautiful –

_(River in combat boots and a shoulder holster, back to back with him, laughing at his screwdriver._

_River in a sleek dress, falling off a building, knowing he will catch her._

_River in a spacesuit, ripping apart realities for him, eyes bright and no regrets._

_River loving him, and he lets her, will let her, how can he let her?)_

– She is lovely, and he understands how he will love her, once, someday. She will not die for him. He will not let her.

“Please,” she whispers. He closes his eyes.

He doesn’t want to go.

“Take her home,” he says. “Goodbye, River.”

_(if you die here, I will never have met you.)_

Behind his eyelids, the world burns.

***

There is a crack in Amelia’s wall.

Sometimes she wakes at night, and looks out into her garden, and waits.

She doesn’t know what she is waiting for.

***

The TARDIS hums as they walk in, almost a wail and almost a reproach. River places her hand on the console and it turns warm, knows her, _knows_.

“You understand,” she whispers. “I’m sorry.”

There is a nudge at River’s mind. _I’m sorry too_. And she should be. They both know what happens next.

“I don’t believe it,” says Donna, from the other side of the console room. “I don’t believe _him_. What was he _thinking_ , he could just send me _home_ like some kind of kid at daycare, like he could just _leave_ and no one would miss him. That _selfish bastard_.”

Her voice is loud and her spine is straight and her eyes are wet, and she glares at the coat on the wall like she is going to fall apart.

She whirls, and River isn’t ready. “How can you stand it?” she says, a question and an accusation. “You love him, don’t pretend you don’t, I saw the way you looked at him. You love him, and he left you, same as me.”

“I – he did it for me.” When did her voice become so broken? “Donna, I’m so sorry, he did it for me.”

***

“Time is non-linear,” he says, to a camera just off to his left, to a DVD extra and a pretty blonde-haired girl a month in his past and thirty years in the future. “It’s more like a ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey…. Stuff.”

“And what happens,” asks Martha, later, “if some of it gets tangled up? What if it, I don’t know, unravels? Time moves, right?”

“Right!” he says, grinning at her. “Martha Jones, you are brilliant. You always ask the right questions.”

She rolls her eyes. There’s no redirecting him when he gets excited like this, but she always tries, anyway. “So what’s the answer?”

For once, he looks at her, really _looks_ at her, and he frowns and she wishes she hadn’t asked.

“Well,” he says, finally, with a dismissive shrug that sends a chill down her spine, “we’d best make sure that never happens, hadn’t we?”

***

Donna weeps against River’s shoulder, and River wants to join her, wants to cry and shudder with all the grief and horror she feels, but she doesn’t. It will happen, has happened, is already happening, and River can feel it, shivers of change running up and down her spine. There is no time for crying now, not for her.

“I’m sorry,” says River, rubbing her hands over Donna’s back, over and over. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I tried to stop him. I’m sorry.”

Donna doesn’t say anything, although River thinks she catches the start of an _it’s alright_ that got cut off by a sob. She understands. It isn’t alright.

The Doctor is dead, and River understands what that means, all that it means, even if Donna doesn't.

The TARDIS seems to understand, too, and for once she flies without anyone to steer her. The rocking of the vortex is soft, gentle in a way it never is, and River closes her eyes and tries not to take it as a goodbye.

***

There is a crack in Amelia’s wall, and it is scaring her. Some nights she can’t sleep for fear of it, and she goes to the other room and curls in with Aunt Sharon or goes outside and watches the garden until morning.

Other nights, she dreams.

She dreams of flashes of light and years of waiting, of strange men in raggedy clothing and big blue boxes that are huge on the inside. She dreams of falling, of flying, of scary eyeball-people and little metal pepperpots and beautiful people she’s sure she should recognize. She dreams of guns and stars and _running_.

When she wakes, the dreams stay, and sometimes they feel real. More real than the world around her, more real than her house or her Aunt or the crack in her wall. She loves her dreams, misses them when she’s awake, misses a man with a eyes soft like sweet tea and a smile like lightning, misses a life she’s never had and a man she’ll never meet.

So Amelia waits, and people whisper as the light goes out of her eyes.

At least no one ever calls her mad.

***

Rose pulls her hand out of her pocket, and sinks to her knees.

Jackie is making tea in the kitchen, and she takes one look at Rose, at her paler-than-fair face and her wide kohl-dark eyes and runs over, crouches down beside her daughter.

“Rose?” she takes her little girl’s shoulders between her hands and gives her a little shake. “Rose, talk to me. Are you alright?”

Rose says nothing, stares out into the distance. Jackie remembers this look. She hasn’t seen it in a while, but she remembers the days when her daughter still looked like a ghost, like one of _those_ ghosts, when Rose would look at a tree, at a door, at her little brother and see nothing but a white wall and the end of the world.

It’s not the kind of thing a mother would forget.

“Pete!” she yells, panic filling her voice. “Pete, get over here!” She looks down again. Rose still hasn’t moved. “Pete, I’ve told you a thousand times to take care of Rose. What have you done to her? Pete!”

Her voice has become a screech, demanding and fearful, all too familiar. Rose slides her hands over her ears, scowling like she’s fifteen years old again, innocent and instinctive. Jackie nearly faints with relief.

“Ow, mum,” she grumbles. “Tone it down a little, would you?”

Jackie grins, then frowns, peering at Rose with more suspicion than relief. “You scared me,” she snaps, accusing. “What happened? Is it a Torchwood thing? I’ve told you, those dimension things are dangerous, but you can’t leave well enough alone, can you?”

Rose shakes her head, weary, and gets to her feet. Jackie slides a silent arm around her shoulders, holding her up with a support that neither of them will acknowledge. It is their own unique way of loving each other, she knows, and Rose knows it too.

“I’m fine, mum,” Rose says, with a firmness she doesn’t feel. “I just think I could do with some tea.”

“Just this once,” allows Jackie, giving Rose a shove towards her room. “Because you look so terrible. Don’t get used to it, princess.”

“Never,” grins Rose, her tongue between her teeth and no light in her eyes. “I’ll just go lie down, shall I?”

“Yes,” says Jackie, and goes back to the kitchen.

In her room, Rose leans her head against her wall and tries to breathe.

_(a white wall, why is it always a white wall? Why is this always where it ends?)_

She slides her hand into her pocket again, and she was right, was right the first time, and everything is wrong.

Her TADIS key has gone cold.

Somewhere above her, the stars start to go out.

***

Donna cries, and the TARDIS rocks, a soothing rhythm that echoes against River’s heart.

Donna cries, and River holds her, and counts the seconds, waits.

_(Time can be rewritten)_

There isn’t any time left, for her.

***

Aunt Sharon keeps telling her to make friends, be friendly, _smile_ , so Amelia tries. She really _tries_ , honest. It’s just that everyone around her is so ordinary, so normal, so _boring_. Not like her dream-doctor and the people she knows she’ll meet when she’s older, and not at _all_ like her.

Sometimes she wonders when she stopped being ordinary too.

She floats around the playground, watching the little girls in her class spin each other around and the boys having fights in the sandbox, and she wishes, really closes her eyes and _wishes_ , that she could meet someone who just feels _right_.

A little boy bumps into her. Amelia jumps.

“Hello,” says the boy, and his eyes are full of shadows, just like hers are, and he smiles at her and something in her chest slots into place.

“I’m Amy,” she says, even though she isn’t, even though she’s been Amelia since forever. She doesn’t say it because it’s true. She says it because it’s _right_. Just like he is.

“I’m Rory,” he replies, shyly. “Sorry I hit you. Are you alright?”

Amy grabs his hand and drags him over to the swings.

***

 Jack gives Martha a cup of coffee and a million-watt grin, and Tom scowls back at him from her side with no real venom. He hands Tom his own paper mug with a wink and a low bow, and Tom laughs and mimes throwing it at Jack’s head.

“How’s life been keeping you, Jack?” Martha’s leaned back in her chair, hair tucked behind her ear and an amused smile dancing in her eyes.

“Exquisitely,” says Jack, sucking on his iced latte in a way that counted as an outrage of decency back home and waggling his eyebrows. “As you can see for yourself.”

Martha laughs, bright and open. “You’re too old for me, Captain. About ninety years too old.”

“And, you know,” adds Tom, sliding an arm around her shoulders. “She likes her men like she likes her coffee. Smooth, strong….”

“Cheap and hand delivered, yeah,” smirks Martha, flicking him on the cheek. “Self-praise is never attractive in a man.”

Tom scowls for a second, fiddles with the ring on Martha’s finger, and chuckles, eyes full of fondness and contentment. Martha smiles wider, and Jack laughs, and everything is _fine_ and –

_(wrong wrong wrong wrong)_

Martha’s face crumples, suddenly, and her hand shoots to her pocket, fumbling around like a drowning man gasps for oxygen, eyes gone wide with horror. Jack frowns for a second, not understanding, then it hits him, too, like a hammer to the chest.

_(he’s had a hammer to the chest before, and it never hurt quite like this.)_

“Martha?” Tom’s voice is hurried, trying for doctor-composure and clearly failing. “Martha, what’s wrong? Jack?”

“I’m fine,” gasps Martha, eyes still tightly shut. “I just need a minute.”

“Me too,” says Jack, and he thinks, _I cannot throw up in front of this man._

He realizes how shallow that sounds, how ridiculous, because this is _wrong_ , all _wrong_ , and a bit of vomit is never that big of a deal, not to a man who cannot die, not now when the world is ending.

“Okay,” says Tom, warily. “I’ll just be outside, shall I? I’ll get you both a drink of water.”

“Thanks, Tom,” says Martha, smiling weakly. “We should be fine in a second.”

When Tom leaves, Martha throws herself at Jack, pulling a silver key out of her pocket with a shaking hand. Jack knows what this is, knows immediately although he hasn’t seen his in nearly a hundred years. He touches it, gently, almost reverently, then draws back with a jolt of horror.

_(wrong wrong wrong all wrong)_

He’d been dead, once, and he’d been brought back, and he’d been brought back wrong, and then he’d been abandoned and waited and waited, and been tortured and killed and none of it had ever felt like this.

_(you’re wrong, Jack, it hurts to look at you. You’re wrong.)_

He had been left, and he had never understood. He thinks, now, that he does.

He thinks that he might be willing to forgive.

It doesn’t make anything better.

***

“Sometimes,” he says, in a low voice, as he watches the street below them with a bit too much interest, “sometimes I dream about things that haven’t happened yet. That will never happen.”

She swings her legs, and they bounce against the wall and make satisfying thumping noises. They’re sitting on her roof, and she tilts her head back, looks up at the stars.

The silence stretches out between them.

“What do you dream about?” she asks, finally.

“You.” His voice is soft, and she thinks, suddenly, of the little boy she met years ago on the playground, with his shy smile and his perfect clouded eyes.

“I would wait for you,” he whispers. “I would wait two thousand years for you.”

“Oh, Rory,” she says, grinning at him. “You idiot. I would wait _forever_.”

He kisses her, or she kisses him. For a moment this world is enough for her.

***

 “Time hates a paradox,” he tells Rose one day, a lifetime and a face ago. “That’s why the Reapers came, a paradox. Nasty things. Never go near them.”

_Never create one_ , he thinks but doesn’t say. _Never again_.

She flushes crimson, drops her gaze. “I’m sorry, Doctor,” she says, her voice a shame-filled near-whisper. “I swear I’ll never – I never meant to ….”

“That’s alright,” he says, voice gentle, and he means it.

“I…. Should I go?” _Her_ voice is sad and sorry and hopeless, and it’s clear she means it too.

He reaches a hand under her chin, lifts it so she looks at him. Her eyes are wide, filled with tears but so _young_ , so _innocent_ , it’s all he can do not to break out into a huge grin. “Nah,” he says, as casually as possible. “I told you, I only take the best. Be a pain to replace you.”

She laughs, and it’s wet but it’s real and that’s a start, he supposes. “Alright, then. So tell me more about these paradoxes. How d’you fix one, anyway?”

His grin breaks out, finally. That’s her, _his_ Rose, his fantastic, curious Rose. “Ah, Rose Tyler,” he says, eyes shining, “I’m so glad you asked.”

***

“River?” Donna’s voice is soft, muffled against River’s shoulder. “River, are you alright?”

River looks down at the woman in her arms, this strong woman with the firm broad shoulders and the hair like fire, who never cries and has been crying into her neck for the past hour.

“The Doctor is dead,” says River, simply, and that answers it, that answers everything.

Donna looks up, pulls away, wipes her eyes roughly with the back of her hand. “Well,” she says, voice wavering but authoritative all the same. “Yes, I – I _noticed_ that.”

River stares at Donna. Donna stares back, hand on her hip. The moment stretches on, into eternity, and then they burst into laughter, raw and broken and clinging on, to the console, to each other, to the end of everything.

The air around River begins to shimmer.

“River,” says Donna, again, panicked this time. “What’s happening?”

“The Doctor is dead,” says River, a bitter half-smile twisting the side of her mouth. “He was always a part of me. He never will know how much, now.”

“No,” says Donna, grabbing a handful of River’s suit. “No, no, _no_. You are _not_ leaving, you’re not leaving me like this, without him. I can’t – “ Her voice wavers. “I need…”

“I am,” says River, and it is _sad_ , just so sad, how true this is, “not what you need.”

Donna steps back, straightening back out, and clasps her hands behind her back. River smiles, weakly.

_(“You’d have loved her,” he says. “She used to think….”)_

“Don’t worry,” whispers River. “You won’t miss me.”

There is a flash of light, and Donna screams.

When she steps out of the TARDIS, later, she is alone, and she doesn’t remember what she is screaming for.

***

They have a baby girl. She is small and perfect, with Rory’s nose and a bright shock of Amy’s hair. Amy clings to her, eyes wide with wonder and love and _fear_ , and Rory would be concerned except he finds himself standing guard by Amy’s side, back straight and arm curled, inexplicably, against his left hip.

He forces himself to relax. This is a _hospital_ , he _works_ here, it is _safe_. No one is going to take their baby away.

“Let’s name her Sharon,” Amy says, bouncing the bundle in her arms. “After my Aunt.”

“Okay,” says Rory, scrunching up his nose, because this is how they work, Amy making the calls and him smiling at her from behind. But… “I’m warning you though, one day she’s going to wake up as a teenager and decide she hates her name.”

“Oi,” snaps Amy, but after a moment she sighs. “Alright, fine. What would _you_ name her, genius?”

“Melody,” says Rory, almost immediately, and then jumps a little in surprise. Melody isn’t a name he’d been thinking about, not at all. He’d wanted to name her something softer and more conventional and less… _lilting_.

He doesn’t take it back, though. It feels right.

Amy grins. “Melody,” she says, a shine in her eyes that Rory’s never seen, even on the day he married her. “Melody Pond.”

“Okay,” sighs Rory, because _why not?_

“You’re loved, Melody,” says Amy, tightening her grip. She doesn’t understand why she feels the need to say it, but she _does_. “You are _so loved_.”

***

Donna leans against the console, mug of tea in one hand and the other planted firmly on her hip.

“Alright, spaceman,” she says, trying for no-nonsense but falling only just short of gleeful delight. “Where are we going now? Care to take me somewhere that won’t get us both killed?”

He darts around the console, setting the coordinates and yanking at wires and doing goodness-only-knows-what else, shooting her glances and manic grins. She smiles back, amused and fond, and decides that it’s _nice_ having someone try and impress her for a change.

“How about the beach?” He grins up at her, then mashes his finger down on a button that makes the whole TARDIS shudder and jerk. “I know this place over in Utah, it’s a lake. Blue sky, white sand, the lot. Beautiful, this time of year – well, the time of year we’ll be going to, anyway.” He looks thoughtful, for just a moment. “It’s beautiful most of the year, actually. Wonder why I haven’t ever been.”

He pulls another lever, and the TARDIS swerves, and Donna nearly spills her tea. “Watch it,” she snaps, then scowls as he reaches over her lap for his sonic screwdriver. Men, _honestly_.

“Sorry,” he says, blithely, and grabs at his psychic paper.

It’s blank. Exactly as it should be.

He wonders why he expected any different.

***

_(Time hates a paradox_. _)_

Rose keeps her eyes closed, her breathing steady. The air in front of her warps, twists, and she feels sick. Something about this is wrong, she can feel it. None of it was supposed to be this way.

_(Nasty things. Never go near one.)_

The Doctor is dead, she knows it, knows it with a hollow certainty that sits in her chest like dread and loss and grief and a hundred other things. The Doctor is dead, and it is _wrong_ , not just because he’s not ever meant to die, but because he wasn’t meant to die _now_.

_(How d’you fix one, anyway?)_

The TARDIS key in her hand starts to glow.

***

The TARDIS stops. It just _stops_ , in the middle of the vortex, and the Doctor frowns.

“What’s going on?” demands Donna, tea forgotten. “Doctor, is something wrong?”

“No, nothing, nothing,” he leans over one of the control panels, screwdriver between his teeth. “Nothing to worry about.”

The lights go out. Donna heroically doesn’t scream.

When the lights come back on, there is a message on the psychic paper. The Doctor looks it over, and something shivers beneath his skin, a wave that feels like _change_ , like _breaking_ , like _fixing_.

_(Time hates a paradox.)_

“Alright, Donna, change of plans,” he says, leaping towards the console. “How would you like to see the biggest library in the universe?”

_(How d’you fix one, anyway?)_

***

“Time can be rewritten,” he says, and it’s not a plea, it’s a prayer. She will not die for him. He cannot bear it.

“Not those times,” she says, almost angrily, her eyes filling with tears. “Not one line. Don’t you _dare_.”

He reaches. He _pulls_. Nothing. Nothing but this moment and this inch between his hand and what he wants and what he _needs_ , nothing but River, _his_ River, and a sacrifice he is never going to make.

“Spoilers,” she whispers, and she smiles. He closes his eyes.

Behind his eyelids, the world burns.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I absolutely loved the Silence In the Library two-parter, but I noticed a couple of plot holes (yes, I know, plot holes in a Moffat episode? Impossible!) that wouldn't let me go. And hence this story. :)
> 
> Much thanks to Prodafish for looking this over for me. :)


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